That Panipat has so often been the field upon which the fate of the Indian empire has been sealed does not imply that Indus was a mere passive conduit for central Asian invasions. The fact is that Indus had always been considered as the outpost of the central Asian states. It always resisted. It was only when the invader had crossed the Indus region that he could, in the battles at Panipat (or Kurukshetra, or Tarain), have all of India. Contrary to much popularized myths, the Indus region always provided the great defence of the subcontinent. It provided the first and the strongest
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